Mamoru Oshii picked up a chicken atball.
"From a purely comrcial standpoint, this film was a failure," Oshii chewed the food, his tone calm as if discussing soone else's work. "They complained that audiences were falling asleep in the theater. They complained that the plot was obscure. These complaints are reasonable."
He put down his chopsticks and picked up his glass.
"Information overflow," Oshii used a technical term. "I pushed the narrative density to the limit. The background signs in every fra, the philosophical taphors in every piece of dialogue, the chanical clicking sounds during Motoko's cybernetic body assembly—all this information added up, far exceeding the average audience's reception threshold within one hundred and twenty minutes."
He took a sip of his drink.
"The audience's brains couldn't process this information, so a protection chanism kicked in, forcing a shutdown. That's why they felt sleepy."
Takuya Nakayama looked at him.
It seed Oshii had his own very self-consistent logic.
"You anticipated this result long ago," Takuya Nakayama stated as a fact.
"I realized there was a problem mid-production," Oshii admitted frankly. "But I didn't hit the brakes. The core of cyberpunk lies in exploring the boundaries of the soul. Optical camouflage, cybernetic bodies—these are just visual anchor points."
"Cut out those philosophical lines, edit it into an action movie from start to finish, and the box office might be better. But that wouldn't be Ghost in the Shell."
He paused, reaching out to stroke Gabriel's ears.
"The long take of Motoko surfacing in the water, the ripples on the surface, the distortion of the city's reflection. I demanded the animators render the light and shadow for every single fra. When the people from Shochiku saw the rushes, they asked what the budget was for those few seconds. I gave them the number, and they smashed their cups on the spot."
Mamoru Oshii leaned back in his chair.
"Regrets, there certainly are," Oshii's voice dropped. "Getting Kenji Kawai, Hiroyuki Okiura, and that whole crew back together to make another film to such an uncompromising standard... it's hard. Investors aren't philanthropists. The face of the film is already set in stone; it can't be changed."
It was a helpless compromise, but one that also contained an incredibly strong personal persistence.
Takuya Nakayama picked up the sake flask and filled their cups.
"As an investor, I have to say, the money wasn't wasted," Nakayama raised his glass. "The VHS distribution rights for North Arica have already been signed. Hollywood has a much sharper nose for this sort of thing than Shochiku ever did."
"Blooms inside the wall, fragrance outside—the life cycle of this film has only just begun."
Mamoru Oshii didn't respond, treating it as re pleasantries.
Takuya Nakayama changed the subject.
"What you find regrettable might not actually be the audience's reception, but rather the inherent limitations of film as a dium."
Oshii looked up.
"One hundred twenty minutes." Nakayama tapped the table with his finger. "That is the iron law of theatrical film. You forcibly compressed a grand cyberpunk worldview into this ti fra. The audience are passive receivers. They sit in a dark theater, images flashing before their eyes at twenty-four fras per second. They don't have ti to stop and think."
Oshii lit a cigarette.
The smoke rose under the warm yellow light.
"You've seen our Ghost in the Shell ga prototype developed at Sega HQ," Nakayama continued. "Current 3D polygon technology is still very rough. The textures on the characters' faces aren't as detailed as your hand-drawn cel artwork. The character movents created by motion capture still feel sowhat stiff."
"But, gas have a dinsion that film can never reach," Nakayama placed his glass on the table, "Interactivity. And the extension of ti that cos with that interaction."
"In a ga, players don't need to digest all the information within two hours." Takuya Nakayama shelled another edama bean. "They control Motoko Kusanagi as she walks the streets of New Port City. They can stop under a neon sign and observe the ripples of rain hitting a puddle. They can take the initiative to browse through the background data on a terminal. This kind of environntal storytelling hands the control of information reception over to the player."
A glint appeared in Mamoru Oshii's eyes.
It was the instinctive curiosity of a creator toward a new dium.
"Those philosophical expressions that require imrsion and fine-tuned self-insertion might actually be experienced better in a ga," Nakayama concluded. "Because a ga can be designed to be less compact. You can break down your information overflow into countless fragnts and scatter them across dozens of hours of gaplay. Players will piece together that world themselves through exploration."
The custors in the izakaya had turned over.
At the table next to them, a few office workers were loudly complaining about the unfair distribution plan for their year-end bonuses.
Oshii stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
"Sega has the underlying engine support. Yuji Naka's technical team is very strong," Mamoru Oshii said. "The logic of making gas is completely different from filmmaking. I don't understand level design."
"Soone does. And he has been trying to fuse these two kinds of logic." Takuya Nakayama picked up a tissue and wiped his mouth.
"Who?"
"Hideo Kojima." Nakayama stated the na.
"Hideo Kojima?" Oshii repeated the na.
He was not completely insulated from personnel changes in the gaming industry. "That producer who was kicked out by Konami and defected to you at Sega?"
"Correction, I personally went to poach him," Nakayama poured himself a cup of sake. "It turned out to be Sega's most cost-effective personnel investnt in recent years."
Nakayama picked up an edama: "You can find a Jupiter console and play 'MGS2', which he led the developnt of. It was just released this year, and as of last month, cumulative global sales have already approached three million units."
Three million units.
In the 1995 Japanese entertainnt industry, this figure was a concept with significant weight.
Even for a nationally renowned animated film, reaching a corresponding number of viewers was by no ans an easy task.
This number was a concept of great significance in the Japanese entertainnt industry in 1995.
Even for a nationally renowned animated film, reaching such a corresponding audience size was by no ans an easy feat.
Mamoru Oshii flicked the ash from his cigarette, remaining silent, his attitude showing signs of softening.
"Sales are only one aspect," Takuya Nakayama said, putting down his chopsticks. "The key lies in the thes he explores. He packs his gas with hardcore concepts like nuclear deterrence, genetic engineering, and information control. This is essentially the sa narrative ambition as your Ghost in the Shell, which explores the boundary between soul and shell."
Mamoru Oshii looked up, his gaze passing through the rising smoke to rest on Takuya Nakayama.
"Kojima is a hardcore film fanatic. His desk is piled high with Hollywood movie videotapes, and he constantly talks about John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick. He has an extraordinary obsession with the framing of ga cara shots and the arrangent of cutscenes," Takuya Nakayama continued. "He even demanded that his team simulate cara depth of field and lens flare effects within the ga."
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